A critique of:

A Hypothesis to Explain the Role of Meat-Eating in Human Evolution
byKatharineMilton

Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
Division of Insect Biology
University of California, Berkeley

The following
is a line-by-line critique of the article: Milton, K. 1999. A hypothesis
to explain the role of meat-eating in human evolution. Evolutionary
Anthropology. 8:11-21.
In it, Milton, a physical anthropologist,
attempts to "explain" why humans eat animal flesh, and why it
"seems mandatory" for "weaned children".

KM: Primates, particularly humans, are
noted for their relatively large brains and considerable behavioral plasticity.
In contrast to behavior, morphological structures tend to alter
only slowly over time, generally in response to particular selective pressures.True, but any
discussion of diet should be supported by a detailed discussion of digestive,
absorptive, transportive, and assimilative biochemistry because
many items may be eaten because of cultural processes that have no valid
nutritional purpose or, worse, are disease promoting. This is especially
true in the culturally-conditioned human, but is also frequently observed
in the other apes, and such items may be of little true nutritional value
and/or may be deleterious to the organism. E.g., in the human, the
consumption of meat and other animal products is linked
epidemiologically with all the currently popular "degenerative diseases".
Although "morphological structures
may be altered only slowly over time" by "particular selective
pressures", there is no evidence that digestive biochemistry
will change radically over time as a response to different cultural diets,
as is implied. If human biochemistry had changed over the long periods
of time humanoids have been eating animal flesh, then the present overwhelming
epidemiological evidence condemning meat-eating would not exist.
Further, there is nothing in contemporary
evolutionary literature that suggests that any species can alter its 'evolution'
by what it chooses, or does not choose, to eat. Evolution is generally
agreed to be driven by random mutations and reshufflings of the germ-line
genetic material to produce genetic variation in the population, which
is then filtered by indefinable processes of "natural selection"
to produce the current 'most fit' phenotype/form. What any species
eats on a voluntary basis does not alter or affect this process. Thus,
Milton's claim in the title of the article that "meat-eating"
somehow supported, directed, or altered "human evolution" is
seen to be false at the outset. So, let's look at the faulty logic
and specious data she uses to reach this erroneous conclusion.

KM: Here I will argue that the pattern
of gut anatomy and digestive kinetics characteristic of ancestral Hominoidea
imposed certain constraints on their descendents in terms of diet. Meat-eating
in the human lineage (Homo spp.) appears to be one way of circumventing
these constraints. Gut anatomy and
diet is a "chicken and egg" situation; is the diet chosen because
of gut anatomy, or is gut anatomy and digestive biochemistry caused by
the species' genetic design? The latter seems much more plausible,
and is the position of consensus science.
Worse, digestive kinetics refers only to
the simple passage of food through the gut, it is merely a simplistic
flow rate. It completely ignores the most important aspects of food
and nutrition; they are: digestive, absorptive, transportive, and assimilative
biochemistry, all of which must function correctly in a synergistic manner
before any nutrient molecule can get into any cell and finally fulfill
its nutritional purpose. Digestive kinetics is independent of these
important biochemical processes and thus is completely meaningless in
discussions of diet and nutrition.
It is absurd to claim that cultural behaviors
can "circumvent" any natural "constraint" or law regarding
any species diet or nutritional needs.

KM: SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT Extant apes
and humans are descended from a common plant-eating ancestor. That pretty much
ends Milton's argument unless she can present credible support for the
severe and numerous 'adaptations' that would be absolutely necessary in
tooth structure, locomotion, complex biochemical systems, and instincts
for such a dramatic change from a plant-based diet to a flesh-based diet.
But, nowhere does she mention biochemistry, or the fact that humans
have no instincts to eat animals raw and whole, as do all the other natural
carnivores and omnivores. Such convenient omissions are glaringly
obvious in all vacuous anthropological arguments that try to justify human
flesh-eating.

KM: Great apes and humans also show similarities
in many features of gut anatomy and a similar pattern of digestive kinetics,
passing ingesta at a relatively slow rate. This kinetic pattern appears
to be a conservative feature of the lineage. Here, Milton
ignores a fact that people who actually experiment with and experience
the effects of raw plant-based diets, unlike Milton, are aware of by personal
experience -- that the "digestive kinetics" of a raw plant-based
diet are completely different from those of a relatively fiberless, cultural,
meat, dairy, and refined grain diet. That is, cultural diet eaters
are generally severely constipated, although they do not know this because
this condition is pandemic, so their condition is 'average'. People
stabilized on a raw diet commonly have a bowel movement after each 'meal'.
This is similar to the fact that cultural
diet-eaters simply accept "colds/flus" as being unavoidable
or inevitable simply because that is the common condition in the masses;
however, if one changes one's diet to a mostly raw plant-based diet, these
'inevitable' "colds/flus" disappear forever. It is important
to understand that in a very sick society, the common condition is not
representative of true health.
It is also critical to note that the term
"digestive kinetics", although sounding impressively scientific,
is completely unrelated to digestive biochemistry; it refers to the purely
mechanical passage of food through the intestines, certainly NOT to the
nutritional value of the food ingested. This is a common criticism of
mine leveled against the less-than-real-sciences, like anthropology; they
tend to just make up scientific-sounding, yet totally meaningless, terms
such as this, and by doing so create boundless confusion and misunderstanding.
This is not science, it is not bad science, it is quack science.

KM: In mammalian herbivores, an increase
in body size is generally associated with a decrease in dietary quality.
Thus, any hominoid increasing in body size and continuing to focus largely
on plant foods is likely to show lowered dietary quality and decreased
energetic input per unit of food consumed. Another misleading
term, "lowered dietary quality" is introduced. Note
that no meaningful chemical or nutritional definition is given; worse,
"low" implies "bad" or "insufficient" somehow
and this is highly prejudicial, in addition to being vague and unscientific.
The fact that the large mammalian herbivores have existed for millions
of years indicates that their diets are quite sufficient and not to be
denigrated by the pejorative: "low quality". Apes are
frugivores, so why even mention herbivores?

KM: Extant apes and humans show various
dietary strategies for dealing with the limitations set by their common
pattern of gut anatomy and digestive kinetics. "Strategy"
implies a process of conscious planning, and a species' diet is set by
its genetic code as are its physiology and biochemistry. The cultural
human is the only animal that chooses its diet by intellectual processes,
much to its detriment. Again, the sloppy use of language, and this
by someone with two degrees in English, gives one great flexibility in
ignoring or distorting underlying truths and concocting intentionally-misleading
'arguments'.

KM: Over their evolutionary history, orangutans
and gorillas appear to have followed a dietary strategy associated with
increased body size and lowered dietary quality. Because of their large
size, both species can and often do subsist on fairly low quality foods
such as mature foliage, bark, and unripe fruits. But they have paid for
this compromise in dietary quality. For example, relative to many other
anthropoids, orangutans, mountain gorillas, and most lowland gorillas
are rather passive primates that lack notable sociality, probably because
they lack the energy required for a more active life. Is not the very
fact that these species exist, and have for a very long time, abundant
evidence that the diet they are eating is perfectly adequate for them?
Again, the pejorative and meaningless terms "low quality foods"
and "compromise in dietary quality" are used despite the fact
that the species mentioned have been evolutionarily successful for millions
of years. Where is it written in stone that a "more active
life" is a better life, as is implied? It is a fact that larger
animals move more slowly than smaller animals, but is this really related
to the quality of life, as is implied?
It is exactly this kind of abandonment of
scientific principles, and the substituting of cultural prejudices in
the guise of science, that pervades the "descriptive sciences".
KM also ignores the well-known and well-understood
fact that larger animals have a relative
metabolic rate far less than smaller animals because their surface
area to volume ratio is less; thus, less heat is lost per unit mass, so
less nutrition per unit mass is sufficient for the larger animal.
Similarly, the fact that lifespan varies
as L = 11.8*mass0.25 indicates that the larger animals
live considerably longer than smaller animals despite the allegedly "low
quality foods"; thus, the "low quality" exists only in
KM's fertile cultural prejudices.

KM: Chimpanzees, on the other hand, have
followed a different dietary strategy. Though they have fairly large bodies,
chimpanzees, like many cercopithecine monkeys, eat a high-energy diet
consisting in large part of ripe fruits. In this manner, though often
only with considerable effort, including extensive travel and the occupation
of large home ranges, chimpanzees generally are able to secure sufficient
high-quality food to maintain their active and highly social lives. Chimps, having
a larger area to volume ratio than gorillas, need more energy;
so what?

KM: Humans, who are believed to have evolved
in a more arid and seasonal environment than did extant apes, illustrate
a third dietary strategy in the hominoid line. By routinely including
animal protein in their diet, they were able to reap some nutritional
advantages enjoyed by carnivores, even though they have features of gut
anatomy and digestive kinetics of herbivores. "Strategy"
= a logical plan based on credible data and analytical skills; there is
no evidence that early, or even current, humans make such an analysis
and consciously decided on eating flesh as a logical result. KM's
own flesh-eating is also not based on any credible data or logical argument;
she was conditioned to do so at a very young age by ignorant parents,
as were we all.
The mysterious unspecified "nutritional
advantages enjoyed by carnivores" remain a mystery. Since diet
is related to biochemistry, any claims regarding diet that are unsupported
by biochemistry are meaningless.
Humans do NOT have the "features of
gut anatomy and digestive kinetics of herbivores"; most herbivores
have highly specialized fermentation processes necessary to digest otherwise
indigestible cellulose in their grass-oriented diet. Horse,
cow,
sheep,
rabbit
Humans are frugivores, most certainly NOT
herbivores. It is amazing that a PhD does not know the differences
between apes and herbivores! This is a clear insight into the scientific
credibility of her article and integrity of her thought processes.

KM: Using meat to supply essential amino
acids and many required micronutrients frees space in the gut for plant
foods. The essential
amino acids found in herbivore animal protein are also found in plant
protein; in fact, that is where they came from in the first place.
If a frugivorous animal were eating its
natural, plant-based diet, why would there be any need to "free
space in the gut for plant foods". This, like so many of KM's
authoritative, always-unsupported claims, is purely nonsensical. She
then stacks these unsupported, nonsensical claims on top of one another
to produce an 'argument' that humans "should" eat meat -- this
is pure quackery.

KM: In addition, because these essential
dietary requirements are now being met by other means, evolving humans
would have been able select plant foods primarily for energy rather than
relying on them for most or all nutritional requirements. KM seems caught
up in the old meat-industry sales-oriented advertising propaganda that
humans need lots of protein; however, the facts indicate
that any plant-based diet supplying sufficient energy
will also supply sufficient nutritional requirements of all kinds. And,
the other apes do quite well on plant-based diets.

KM: This dietary strategy is compatible
with hominoid gut anatomy and digestive kinetics...However, it is
not compatible with human digestive and assimilative biochemistry,
as the epidemiological and experiential evidence shows, but these facts
are overlooked for the convenience of the "hypothesis". If
biochemistry were honestly considered, the "hypothesis" would
immediately be shown to be absurd.

KM: ... and would have permitted ancestral
humans to increase their body size without losing mobility, agility, or
sociality. This dietary strategy could also have provided the energy
required for cerebral expansion. KM introduces
the absurd concept that body size changes, evolutionarily, as a function
of cultural diet, specifically meat-eating; however, no evidence to support
this is given, or exists. E.g., did elephants gain their large body
size by voluntarily eating more nutrient-dense diets? No, exactly
the opposite is seen; larger animals thrive on less nutrient-dense diets.
In fact, among primates, the smallest
ones eat the most animal food/fat, and they have shown no
"cerebral expansion" or increase in intelligence or "body
size".
One of the more amusing crackpot theories
propagated by meatarian propagandists is that eating animal fat made the
human brain grow larger, thus animal fat made us more intelligent. If
that were true, then why aren't carnivores much more intelligent than
humans, considering that they have been eating animal fat millions of
years longer than humans? Energy in the brain is provided by glucose,
blood sugar, not animal fat; if the brain is using fatty acids for energy,
the body is in a severely malnourished condition, such as that created
by the Atkins' diet. Each non-carnivorous
animal makes exactly the amount of fat that it needs from its natural
diet; it does not have to eat exogenous animal fat to make the required
fat.

KM: All extant apes eat strongly plant-based
diets composed of the fruits, leaves, flowers, and bark of tropical forest
trees and vines. Most apes also consume some invertebrates and, less commonly,
vertebrates.Actually, this
is not true, but it is commonly claimed, always without supporting data
or analysis of this infrequent behavior, by people trying to make the
specious human flesh-eater argument. The facts indicate that insect
and flesh-eating among the chimps is nutritionally insignificant,
and that it is highly social in character, perhaps being more accurately
categorized as 'play'. Intentionally ignoring these facts in the
service of misinformation is standard in the false ape-as-flesh-eater
argument.

KM: In general, however, the gut anatomy
of all extant apes is quite similar. Human gut anatomy is quite similar
to that of other extant hominoids. Mitchell remarked that primitive humans
were probably omnivorous with a [cultural-ljf]
tendency toward carnivory, but pointed out that "the result
has not yet been any marked adaptive change in the character of the gut
as compared with that of the Anthropoid Apes, although in the latter the
diet is omnivorous with the strongest leaning toward the vegetable side."Note that human
cultural flesh-eating has resulted in no 'adaptations' to same;
thus, today's epidemiological evidence that flesh-eating is responsible
for all the currently-popular "degenerative diseases". Further,
even "strongest leaning" does not adequately describe the numerical-insignificance
of nutritional input of insects/flesh nor the social character of same.
"Science" without numbers is no science at all.

KM: In 1904, based on study of the comparative
anatomy of the hominoid gut, Elliott and Barclay-Smith suggested that
the structure of the human gut actually appeared to be closer to that
of a herbivore than an omnivore. This type of
archaic, sloppy work has led to much confusion. The human gut is
quite different than that of the true herbivore: horse, cow, sheep, goat.
It is unfortunate that authors, such as these, were apparently unfamiliar
with the classification: frugivore. Herbivores
generally eat grasses and do not eat fruit; thus their highly specialized
fermentation organs. Frugivores, such as chimps, our closest genetic
relative, eat mostly fruit, some leaves, and seeds/nuts.

KM: The marked sacculations characteristic
of the human and ape colon also support the view that the ancestral line
giving rise to all extant hominoids was strongly herbivorous. Further
evidence of a plant-based diet for ancestral hominoids comes from the
study of dentition, which suggests that many fossil hominoids were largely
frugivorous. Again, herbivorous
and frugivorous are used interchangeably, and incorrectly. This
from a PhD who has yet to come to grips with this high school level material.

KM: Thus, using data from various lines
of evidence, there seems to be general consensus that humans come from
an ancestral lineage that was strongly dependent on plant foods, and that
human gut anatomy is very similar to that of other extant hominoids. Despite
this basic similarity, there is one striking difference between the gut
anatomy of humans and apes. This difference is in the size relationship
of different sections of the gut. In all apes, the greatest gut volume
is in the colon (>45% of total), with only about 14 to 29% of the total
gut volume in the small intestine. For humans, the greatest gut volume
is in the small intestine (>56%); only about 17 to 23% of the total
gut volume is in the colon. Could this mean
that humans are even more markedly frugivorous than the
other apes? Could the larger colon capacity in the other apes be
necessary to support more fermentation of the fibrous, non-fruit, leafy
plant material? Could the reason for the latter be similar to that
for the large fermentation-dedicated chambers of the true herbivore
(leaf-eater)?
"In consequence, an important functional
adaptation among strong frugivores would be a relatively large
gut (e.g. long intestine) and extremely short throughput times; therefore
nutrient assimilation is maximized with high throughput rates." (Pedro
Jordano, Chapter 6: Fruits
and Frugivory in Seeds: The Ecology of Regeneration in Plant Communities,
CAB International Publishing, 2000)
Since nutrient absorption is a function
of area of the small intestine, not volume, volume data is irrelevant
and misleading.

KM: Compared to apes, modern humans also
have a relatively small total gut for their body size. These size relationships
make it clear that among extant Hominoidea, humans are the outlier taxon.
This suggests that humans rather than apes have deviated most markedly
from the ancestral condition in terms of gut proportions and diet. Again, would
this not indicate a more frugivorous diet for the human?
Most humans who actually experiment with
various raw diets come to much prefer fruits to "vegetables";
i.e. structural parts of the plant proper: roots (potatoes, carrots, onion,
garlic, ...), stalks (celery, asparagus, ...), leaves (cabbage, lettuce,
...), immature flowers (broccoli, cauliflower, ...). Vegetables,
being the structural foundation of the plant, are not "intended"
to be eaten, so generally contain toxic chemicals or even hormonal sex
disrupters to protect themselves from predatory animals. In distinction,
it is in the best interests of the plant for its fruit to be eaten so
the seeds are dispersed by the predator animal, thus ripe fruits do not
contain toxic, bad-tasting chemicals and are more appealing to passing
animals.

KM: However, in comparing gut proportions of
apes and humans, ... my concern is with the inherited pattern of gut proportions
characteristic of all extant apes on the one hand and all modern humans
on the other - a proportional relationship that I hypothesize is found
in all apes regardless of their environmental circumstances or genetic
background and one characteristic of all humans regardless of their environmental
circumstances or genetic background. The dominance of the small intestine
in humans suggests adaptation to a high-quality diet composed of foods
that are nutritionally dense, volumetrically concentrated, and amenable
to digestion in the small intestine. When eating a falsely-labeled,
"high-quality diet composed of foods that are nutritionally dense,
volumetrically concentrated" it would follow logically that the small
intestine would need be shorter, as it is in the carnivore, not
longer, as the higher concentration of nutrients would promote more rapid
absorption than if the food were nutrient-diffuse. In the real science
called chemistry, it is known that increased
concentration causes faster chemical reactions. Note the curious
inversion of logic and contradiction to well known principles in real
science.

KM: In contrast, dominance of the colon
in extant apes suggests adaptation to a diet with considerable refractory
plant material that cannot be digested in the small intestine and that
passes into the voluminous hindgut, where it is retained while certain
essential functions such as fermentation of refractory materials are carried
out.The obvious conclusion,
ignored for the sake of meatarian propaganda, is that the human is more
frugivorous than the other apes.

KM: Gut proportions are one factor that
can influence digestive parameters and food choices in the natural environment,
but another important factor that needs consideration is gut kinetics.
Gut kinetics refers to the pattern of movement of ingesta, both
particulate and liquid, through the digestive tract. Unfortunately,
KM totally ignores the critical importance of biochemistry; that
is, how efficient are the digestion, absorption, transport, and assimilation,
all of which are absolutely imperative before any nutrients get to the
cells and are of any use. Here, she reduces complex, highly-interrelated
biochemical processes to an overly simplistic mechanical pumping function.
The trivial tools of physical anthropology, the ruler and stop watch,
simply do not pertain to biochemistry! So, all mention of "gut
kinetics" reveals an impenetrable ignorance regarding diet.

KM: Milton and Demment examined the pattern
of digestive kinetics of common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) fed diets
of two fiber levels. One diet contained 14% neutral detergent fiber; the
other contained 34% neutral detergent fiber. Ingesta passed more rapidly
on the high fiber diet (mean transit time = 38 hours on the high-fiber
diet and 48 hours on the low-fiber diet. Mean transit time is an estimate
of the average time ''particles'' of marker take to pass through a system
of unknown or undefinable compartments). Because ingesta passed more rapidly
when dietary quality was low (high-fiber diet), the chimp gastrointestinal
tract had less time to process ingesta flowing through it. We already know
that constipation in the human is quickly and permanently eliminated by
eating more fiber; that is because the dominant cultural diet is fiber-poor. Fiber provides fecal bulk and stimulates
peristalsis and elimination; this is well known. Force-feeding captive
chimps an unnatural constipating diet, intentionally, proves nothing.

KM: However, because this lower-quality
food passed more rapidly, chimpanzees could eat more food per unit of
time. With only moderate alterations in dietary quality in the natural
environment, the end result of both passage rates in chimpanzees would
probably be about the same; that is, chimpanzees would be able to meet
their daily requirements for energy and nutrients on both diets. Unfortunately,
transit times are totally unrelated to the efficiency of digestion and
absorption; complex nutrient-in/feces-out chemical studies would have
to be done to determine how much of what was actually absorbed on each
diet.
Notice how this contradicts the earlier
claims about the comparatively shorter human small intestine.

KM: Extensive work has been carried out
on the passage kinetics of humans. For example, a detailed study
of human passage kinetics at Cornell University showed a mean transit
time of 62.4 hours for subjects on a 0% fiber diet and 40.9 hours for
human subjects on a 17.3% fiber diet.But, this study
was done on chronically-constipated cultural diet-eaters; what would the
results be for people stabilized on an all raw diet? People who
experiment with raw diets quickly learn just how constipated they were
on a cultural diet. Did this research include raw fooders? Of
course not.

KM: However, an extensive body of data
supports the view that in humans higher-quality diets tend to pass more
slowly than do fibrous, lower-quality diets. Again, the prejudicial
and misleading "high" and "low" quality terms. Logically,
IF a diet were of a 'higher quality' wouldn't it be passed through more
quickly, because it was more efficient, more readily digested and assimilated?

KM: Relative to wild apes, most human
populations eat foods that are amazingly refined, digestible, and calorie-rich,
as well as low in plant fiber. In humans, much food preparation (nonsomatic
digestion) occurs before a food item is ever brought into contact with
the mouth and gastrointestinal tract, a behavior that could ultimately
have affected human gut proportions. The imaginative
claim that prepared, refined, cooked, or junk food is conveniently predigested
can not be supported by credibility. This is a bold claim, yet absolutely
no evidence is given to support it. On the other hand, it is well
known in real science, like biochemistry, that proteins are 'denatured'
by cooking; that is, the 3-dimensional structures that give proteins their
biochemical activity are destroyed. Clearly, the amine-based offensive
odors of the feces of human meat-eaters indicate that the cooked animal
proteins that supplied these amines were not properly digested or assimilated.
Also, conveniently ignored are the facts that cooking creates many
toxic pyrolytic (fire splitting) and Maillard-reaction
chemicals, and that some of the most powerful carcinogens known, nitrosamines,
are produced when animal protein and fats are cooked.

KM:
HOMINOID EVOLUTION Like the Carnivora, extant Hominoidea seem ''stuck''
with their ancestral pattern of digestive kinetics and basic features
of gut anatomy. We are also 'stuck'
with our digestive biochemistry, so it might be in our best interests
to respect that. Digestive kinetics
are meaningless.

KM: The fossil record shows that during
the early to middle Miocene, hominoids reached their greatest level of
diversity. In general, Miocene apes were characterized by a frugivorous
pattern of molar morphology, though some evidence suggests that larger
middle-Miocene apes may have had omnivorous tendencies.Human teeth today
clearly support a frugivorous diet; we have no elongated snout and large
canines as the omnivores do; we have no shearing teeth on the side, as
they do.

KM: I will compare the dietary niches
of extant pongids to illustrate how meat-eating may have permitted human
ancestors to overcome the energetic constraints imposed by increasing
body size in the hominoid lineage.Does this not
directly contradict KM's earlier claims that fruits were the major source
of energy? KM: ... evolving humans would have been able select
plant foods primarily for energy. Frequent
self-contradiction is one signature of the quack.

KM: Not surprisingly, in view of their
size and strongly plant-based diet, gorillas (particularly mountain gorillas)
and orangutans are often forced to turn to lower quality plant foods --
mature leaves, bark, pith, and unripe fruits --when sufficient ripe fruits
and high-quality young leaves are not available. Note: gorillas
prefer ripe fruits, now apparently a 'high quality' food; and now young
leaves are also "high quality". This constant shifting
of terms, and rampant self-contradiction, makes any meaningful communication
impossible.

KM: But many such features appear to be
resistant to changes that, at least theoretically, might seem useful.
"Seem useful"
to whom? Evolution, which always works in the most elegantly useful
manner; or an insect biologist that doesn't know she is an ape, and so
eats a totally unnatural, cooked, culturally-conditioned, omnivorous diet?

KM: As discussed, there seems general consensus
that extant hominoids come from a strongly herbivorous ancestral lineage.
Nope; frugivorous.
This constant shifting of terms, and erroneous use of them, is a
fatal flaw in what argument might exist here. Herbivores: cattle,
deer, sheep, moose, rabbit, goat.

KM: Although some western lowland gorilla
groups at times eat a considerable amount of fruit and may range as far
as 2.3km/day, it seems to be generally accepted that lowland gorillas
eat more vegetative plant parts than do chimpanzees and fall in an intermediate
ecological position between chimpanzees and bonobos on the one hand and
mountain gorillas on the other. Is this dietary
tradeoff by instinct, or is not enough fruit locally available due to
human encroachment and habitat destruction?

KM: In short, even lowland gorillas do
not appear to be as active, agile, and socially complex as are members
of the genus Pan. I hypothesize that, due to features of their almost
exclusively plant-based diet, in combination with features of their common
hominoid digestive tracts, energy input in these great apes may often
be sufficiently limited such that nonessential behaviors are not favored.Let's see; evolution
"favors" "nonessential behaviors". Why does
KM give increased status to "nonessential behaviors"?

KM: In other words, I do not believe that
orangutans and gorillas have sufficient ''extra'' energy to be more active
and social. If "extra
energy" were necessary for these species to engage in "nonessential
behaviors", then all they'd need to do would be to eat more. It
seems these unspecified behaviors may be programmed into each species
rather than being a consequence of excessive energy. And, just how
does KM measure the appropriate level of social activity for each species?
That is, how does an obviously confused human, deeply lost in cultural
hypnosis, be so arrogant as to judge Nature?

KM: Members of the genus Pan [chimp]
eat a specialized diet composed, in large part, of succulent ripe
fruits. They supplement this basic fruit diet with select protein-rich
young leaves, buds, and flowers, as well as animal matter (particularly
invertebrates but also some vertebrates). Note, as usual,
no quantities are given and the social aspects of chimp flesh-eating
are totally ignored. The facts,
on the other hand, indicate that chimp consumption of animal matter of
any source is social, not nutritional, in purpose.

KM: WHERE DO WILD CHIMPANZEES GET PROTEIN?
The fact that the chimpanzee diet is heavily dominated by fruits raises
the question of how these apes obtain the protein they require each day.
Again, KM's programming
by the extant cowboy-culture's misleading, greed-inspired advertising
budgets that insists humans need large quantities of protein are revealed.
Adult humans need ~1/3% of the total diet as
protein. The other apes would
presumably require approximately the same amount, which is readily supplied
by fruits and leaves.

KM: Although wild fruits as a class are
low in protein, fruits average 6.5 +/- 2.6% protein dry weight (range,
3.2% to 12.6%). Nutrient compositions
based on dry weight are totally meaningless because the food is eaten
as is, with its water. In real
chemistry, percents are based on the total sample composition. Parroting
this nonsensical data reveals a major insufficiently in simple arithmetic.

KM: Common chimpanzees, particularly females,
also often '' fish'' for termites and ants, sometimes devoting hours per
day to this activity. This suggests that although termites and ants are
small, the nutritive benefits they provide are worth this considerable
investment of time. The nutritive
value of highly-seasonal termite
fishing is negligible. It may be more of a 'play' activity rather
than a legitimate nutritional one as is commonly assumed.

KM: If a similar gastric emptying rate
prevails in wild chimpanzees, they should be able to fill the stomach
several times each day, retaining refractory materials (seeds, seed coats,
pectic substances, cellulose, hemicelluloses) in the cecum and proximal
colon for fermentation activities. Of what use is
feeding an artificial, fiber-free, non-food to humans? Worse, what
does mean for wild chimps? Obviously nothing. This is not
science. Quack, quack!

KM: Options for any mammal's diet are limited.
Food has to be either plants or animals or a mix of both, and has to supply
all nutrients or their precursors that are essential for that particular
animal. What spells the difference between species in terms of diet are
the types and proportions of foods from each of these two basic dietary
categories that can be efficiently exploited. In terms of gut anatomy
and digestive kinetics, meat, at least up to some maximum percentage of
diet, should pose no problem for a hominoid. Digestion occurs
because of biochemistry and the proper enzymes being supplied for
each type of nutrient; "gut anatomy and digestive kinetics"
are totally unrelated to biochemistry.
"No problem" up to "some
maximum percentage of diet"?? Data on colorectal
cancer and heart
disease say exactly the opposite.

KM: In captivity, for example, boned meat
(raw beef and cooked chicken) was so well digested by common chimpanzees
that it typically produced no visible residues in feces.So what?
There are no visible meat residues in the feces of human meat-eaters either,
but that certainly does NOT mean the meat was properly digested and assimilated.
In fact, the universally offensive, and characteristically-specific,
odors of human meat-eaters indicates that the animal proteins were NOT
properly digested and assimilated, for if they were, no amines would be
left to produce those highly-characteristic odors. Putrefactive
bacteria in the intestines are responsible for the fact that no "visible
residues" are in the human feces, and they are also responsible for
producing the odors: indole, skatole, putrescine, cadaverine, and H2S.
Further, Goodall
points out that flesh is chewed by chimps with leaf wadges to extract
the juice, and the leaves and solid meat residue is then "usually"
discarded. Thus, very little flesh is actually eaten and there is
little need or facility present to digest it.

KM: However, hominoids are not carnivores
and have neither the gut anatomy nor digestive physiology of Carnivora.
As Speth and Speilman discussed, healthy humans are not known to derive
any particular benefit from eating excessive amounts of protein; indeed,
some evidence suggests that excessive protein consumption is unhealthy
for humans. Actually, there
is considerable and convincing evidence, not "some",
that excessive protein consumption, especially in the form of animal proteins,
is associated with all the currently-popular "degenerative diseases".

KM: Excessive protein consumption '' idles''
the body engine faster while producing no demonstrably favorable metabolic
effects. In addition to these concerns, catabolizing protein for energy
is not practical for mammals such as hominoids if other energy substrates
are available, the reason being that the metabolic costs of protein conversion
greatly exceed those of converting carbohydrates and fat. Perhaps most
important, adult humans apparently cannot catabolize sufficient protein
to meet more than 50% of their daily energetic requirements. Excessive protein
consumption, which in the adult human would mean >~1/3%
of the total diet, also leads to indigestion, putrefaction in the
intestines, and the bacterial production of toxic amine compounds, such
as indole, skatole, putrescine, cadaverine, and H2S,
and the consequent absorption of these toxic compounds into the body. The
characteristic offensive odor of the feces and urine of human meat-eaters
is irrefutable evidence that excessive, animal proteins are not properly
digested, for if they were, no amino groups (-NH2) would
be present to form these toxic compounds.
Worse, meat-eating in the human means significantly
more animal-fat is consumed than would occur in the chimp, if the
chimp actually ate the "meat", because tropical animals have
very little body fat due to the high ambient temperatures, and meat commercialized
for human consumption is intentionally raised for maximum fat content. That
is, the "best" quality meats intentionally have more fat than
the lesser qualities, simply because the higher the fat content, the more
tender the meat -- that is, the more readily cut and chewed. Beyond
the trivially-simplistic, misleading, and seemingly-neutral concept of
"idling the body engine faster", the opposite process of calorie
restriction, thus intentionally lowering the excessive metabolic frenzy
due to overeating, has resulted in many beneficial results.
In fact, the cultural, meat-oriented diet creates so much metabolic
stress and excessive metabolic activity that a person adopting a plant-based
diet may experience a significant decrease in resting body temperature.
At least three obvious factors will result in lowered metabolic
rate: loss of all excess body fat - this reduces needless thermal insulation
(fat) and allows the body to cool easier, the loss of excess weight eliminates
the energy burden needed to just carry it around, and the reduced load
of excess proteins and exogenous toxins eliminates the need to process,
and detoxify or store them.

KM: Though animal matter presumably did
not serve as a primary source of calories for evolving humans, there is
no reason why moderate amounts of animal matter could not have been used
as an important dietary component if it could be secured. Animal "food"
supplies far too much protein, fat, and calories when compared to our
realistic nutritional
needs. Again, KM fails to recognize the obvious and profound differences
between our very real biochemical limitations related to our natural diet
and culture; this from an anthropologist. Just because people
DID something, that does not mean it is beneficial or healthy; in fact,
the human species has a rather pathological history of murder, war, slavery,
racism, sexism, rape, and, more recently, planetary pollution, global
ecocide, and massive species extinction. In KM's strange imagination,
no doubt this pathological behavior would also play an essential role
in "human evolution".

KM: I depart from those who suggest that
meat may have been only a marginal food for early humans. I have come
to believe that the incorporation of animal matter into the diet played
an absolutely essential role in human evolution, though I leave it to
others to determine prey types and sizes, means of procurement, and the
like. Nice dodge here
that indicates KM has no real data or logic to back up her strange claims,
so she leaves it to "others" to support her personal fantasies.
She also completely fails to indicate just how humans 'adapted'
to a diet so radically different than their natural one; how, indeed,
did dozens or hundreds of biochemical pathways 'adapt' to accommodate
a radically different diet than the one to which our biochemistry was
originally tuned? There is no known evolutionary mechanism that
could perform such magic, and KM presents none to support her speculation.
Again, she makes an outrageous claim regarding a scientific specialty
that she obviously does not understand, and, predictably, provides absolutely
no support.
If, indeed, primitive man did 'adapt' to
meat-eating, then why the currently existing profound amount of epidemiological
data that links flesh, and other animal products, with all the currently-popular
"degenerative diseases"? And IF we did 'adapt', then why
do people who stop eating same uniformly report experiencing better health?
Of course, KM, having no personal experience with raw plant-based
diets, would rather ignore them for the convenience of her meatarian propaganda.

KM: Human ancestors appear to have evolved
in a somewhat arid, seasonal, and fairly open environment where ripe fruits
and young leaves probably were not available throughout the year. Animal
protein not only provides all of the amino acids humans require in the
proper complements and proportions for human protein synthesis, but also
is more efficiently digested than plant protein. If animal protein
is "more efficiently digested than plant proteins" then why
are the feces, urine, menstrual discharges, and bodies of the human meat-eater
loaded with toxic, offensive-smelling, amine compounds produced by putrefactive
bacteria from undigested animal proteins in the colon? If animal
proteins were digested, and eventually assimilated, properly, there would
not be any amine groups available in the colon to form these toxic amine
compounds which are absorbed into the body with unhealthy consequences. And
why does the plant-eating human not produce these toxic compounds? The
only answer is that plant proteins are digested and assimilated properly,
while animal proteins are not. So, it is obvious that KM's unsupported
statement: "Animal protein ... is more efficiently digested than
plant protein" is patently false.
Animal protein is usually cooked by the
"civilized" human, quite unlike "human ancestors"
and apes, and the high temperatures of cooking denature
the protein; that is, they destroy the higher
3-dimensional structures absolutely necessary for biological activity.
The protein content of animal flesh is considerably in excess of
the ~1/3% necessary in the adult human diet, and
there is no reason to believe that an excess digestive capacity of some
10,000% to 12,000% is built into s system that would never see that
concentration in its natural diet.

KM: A hominoid would thus need to eat
fewer grams of meat to satisfy all protein requirements than it would
if protein requirements were being met from plant parts even of very high
quality. KM, never actually
experiencing a raw, plant-based diet, is ignorant of the fact that human
raw fooders experience a great reduction in the amount of food necessary,
compared to their meat-oriented, cooked, cultural diet.

KM: Perhaps equally important, animal tissues
also supply many essential minerals and vitamins that humans require.This is the great,
always-unsupported myth of the dishonest meatarian propagandists, but
what does the nutritional data show? Note: these alleged "many
essential minerals and vitamins" are not identified, but that is
not a surprise, given the well-established record of lack of intellectual
integrity in this article, is it?
Below, we compare the nutrients in "Beef,
composite of trimmed retail cuts, separable lean and fat, trimmed to 1/4"
fat, prime, cooked" and various plant sources of the same nutrients.
The only "nutrients" that meat contains
in amounts in excess of those in plant sources are possibly B-12, although
B-12 is found in/on some plant foods [Mozafar, A., Enrichment of some
B-vitamins in plants with application of organic fertilizers. Plant and
Soil 167:305-311, 1994.], and most certainly
artery-clogging saturated animal fats, cholesterol, animal toxins, antibiotics,
farm chemicals, pesticides, and animal hormones, both endogenous and exogenous,
including 'flight-or-fight' hormones.
(Many thanks to Jerry Story for his free
nutritional database program for Windoze
or Linux that
can search the current USDA nutritional database by nutrient, among other
quite useful functions. Without it, these numerical comparisons
would have been impossible, and the malicious meatarian misinformation
not exposed!)

The
following color scheme is used: red for 2-5 times the nutritional content
in beef, orange for
5-10 times, yellow for 10-100 times, and green for greater than 100 times
the amount in beef.

2-5

5-10

10-100

>100

100g sample

beef

walnut

sesame

pump-
kin
seed

thyme

parsley
frz drd

thyme

agar

wheat
germ

cloves

brazil
nut

wheat
germ
oil

sun
flower
seeds

spirulina

rice
bran

shiiatake
mushroom
dried

acerola
cherry
fresh

energy, Kcal

322

607

573

541

276

271

276

306

360

323

656

884

870

290

316

296

32

energy, Kcal

pro, %

25.6

24.4

17.7

24.5

9.1

31.3

9.1

6.2

23.2

6

14.3

22.8

57.5

13.4

9.6

0.4

pro, %

fat, %

23.5

56.6

49.7

45.8

7.4

5.2

7.3

0.3

9.7

20.1

66.2

100

49.6

7.7

20.9

1

0.3

fat, %

cho

0

12.1

23.4

17.8

63.9

42.4

63.9

80.9

51.8

61.2

12.8

18.8

23.9

49.7

75.4

7.7

cho

fiber

0

5

11.8

3.9

37

32.7

37

7.7

13.2

34.2

5.4

10.5

3.6

21

11.5

1.1

fiber

Ca, mg

9

58

975

43

1890

176

1890

625

39

646

176

116

120

57

11

12

Ca, mg

P, mg

198

464

629

1174

201

548

201

52

842

105

600

705

118

1677

294

11

P, mg

Fe, mg

2.2

3.1

14.6

15

124

53.9

123.6

21.4

6.3

8.7

3.4

6.8

28.5

18.5

1.7

0.2

Fe, mg

Na, mg

62

1

11

18

55

391

55

102

12

243

2

3

1048

5

13

7

Na, mg

K, mg

347

524

468

807

814

6300

814

1125

892

264

600

689

1363

1485

1534

146

K, mg

Mg, mg

24

202

351

535

220

372

220

770

239

1.1

225

354

195

781

132

18

Mg, mg

Zn, mg

5.4

3.4

7.8

7.5

6.2

6.1

6.2

5.8

12.3

1.1

4.6

5.1

2

6

7.7

0.1

Zn, mg

Cu, mg

0.1

1.0

4.1

1.4

0.9

0.5

0.9

0.6

0.8

0.3

1.8

1.8

6.1

0.7

5.2

0.1

Cu, mg

Mn, mg

0

4.3

2.5

3.0

220

1.3

7.9

4.3

13.3

30

0.8

2

1.9

14.2

1.2

Mn, mg

Se, mcg

24.1

17

5.7

5.6

4.6

32.3

4.6

7.4

79.2

5.9

2960

59.5

7.2

15.6

136

0.6

Se, mcg

Vit A, IU

296

9

380

3800

63,240

3800

530

50

570

767

Vit A, IU

Vit E

0.2

2.6

2.3

1.0

1.7

1.7

5

1.7

7.6

192.4

50.3

5

6

0.1

0.1

Vit E

Thiamin, mg

0.1

0.2

0.8

0.2

0.5

1

0.5

1.9

0.1

1

2.3

2.4

2.8

0.3

Thiamin, mg

Riboflavin

0.2

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

2.3

0.4

0.2

0.5

0.3

0.1

0.2

3.7

0.3

1.3

0.1

Riboflavin

Niacin, mg

4.3

0.7

4.5

1.7

4.9

10.4

4.9

0.2

6.8

1.6

1.6

4.5

12.9

34

14.1

0.4

Niacin, mg

PantoAcid,mg

0.4

0.6

0

0.3

2.5

3

2.3

0.2

6.7

3.5

7.4

21.9

0.3

PantoAcid, mg

B-6, mg

0.4

0.6

0.9

0.2

1.2

1.4

1.2

0.3

1.3

1.3

0.3

0.8

0.4

4.1

1

B-6, mg

Folate, mcg

8.0

66

97

58

274

1535

274

580

281

93

4

227

94

63

163

14

Folate, mcg

B-12, mcg

2.4

B-12, mcg

Vit C, mg

0

3.2

1.9

50

149

50

80.8

0.7

1.4

10.1

3.5

1678

Vit C, mg

Cholesterol, mg

83

Cholesterol, mg

So, the facts
indicate that KM's unsupported claims about the nutritional superiority
of "animal tissues" are simply wrong. She could
have checked the data, but chose not to in service of the meatarian
propaganda campaign.

KM: We need to bear in mind that carnivores
and omnivores do not eat only muscle tissue or only muscle and fat but
instead eat brains, viscera, bone marrow, the liver, and other organs.
These different animal tissues provide different types and proportions
of particular essential nutrients. In this sense, the eating of different
body parts by a carnivore resembles the feeding behavior of a herbivore,
which consumes plant foods of different types to obtain a better dietary
mix and thereby improve overall dietary quality. So what? How
many modern humans eat anything other than animal muscle meat; conveniently
disguised by cooking to make it palatable and chewable, in addition to
being further camouflaged by artificial flavors, condiments, and spices?

KM: Humans able to satisfy their total
protein and much of their essential mineral and vitamin requirements with
animal matter rather than plants would free space in their gut for energy-rich
plant foods such as fruits, nuts, starchy roots, other plant parts, or
honey. It is obvious
that KM is lost in the meatarian propaganda that falsely claims humans
need lots of, or concentrated, proteins. The facts prove that humans
require a mere ~1/3% protein in their average diet,
maintain nitrogen balance with small amounts of
protein, and research consistently shows that vegetarians
and raw fooders are healthier than meat-eaters.
No natural frugivorous animal has any need
to "free space in their gut", nor does any animal on its natural
diet. This is a completely nonsensical idea.
KM also neglects to explain just where the
excess protein-digestive capacity of some 10,000 to 12,000% over
the natural input would come from.

KM: Jones has pointed out that a disproportionately
large number of the major food plants domesticated by humans are cyanogenic.
If this is an ancient trend in human food habits, the incorporation of
animal protein, with its high methionine content, in the diet of early
humans could have had considerably utility. An adequate supply of sulfur-containing
amino acids is essential in the detoxification of cyanogenic plant foods.
Animal protein may therefore have permitted early humans to use, or to
use more heavily, such cyanogenic but energy-rich foods. When was the
last time we heard of a meat-eater dying of a heart attack, stoke, cancer,
or kidney disease, and when was the last time we heard of a vegetarian/vegan dying
from food-induced cyanide poisoning? A list of methionine-containing
plant foods is given below. Thus, KM's meatarian
propaganda, again, is seen to be false and misinformative.

KM: Using animal matter primarily to satisfy
requirements for essential nutrients and plant foods primarily for energy
is a dietary strategy that is compatible with hominoid gut anatomy and
digestive kinetics as well as evidence from the human fossil and archeological
record.However, there
is no nutritional or biochemical data that supports this claim; it is
false.
What people do, and what Nature intends
them to do, is often quite different much to the dismay of the breakers
of Natural Law -- the horrible state of health of modern humans is the
inevitable consequence of developing cultural "dietary strategies".
One would hope that an anthropologist would be able to understand
this distinction and its consequences.

KM: Such a diet, because of its high quality,
would have permitted evolving humans to avoid the constraints gorillas
and orangutans suffered as a result of body size increases (lowered dietary
quality along with lowered mobility and sociality). It is only through
profound arrogance and anthropocentric chauvinism that KM makes this absurd
statement; how, exactly, is she authorized to criticize another species'
evolutionary success? What evidence is there that gorillas and orangutans
"suffered" any "constraints" at all? Her insulting
claim is evidence of profound speciesism; her self-aggrandizing assumption
is that humans are somehow better than other animals, and that we should
measure their "success" in terms of our behavior. The
other animals on the planet have not gone on a self- and omni-destructive
rampage of global fratricide and ecocide, as the human is currently engaged
in, and has been throughout its bloody history. We aren't much of
an example.

KM: This dietary breakthrough in the human
lineage presumably was achieved through both technological and social
innovations that permitted early humans to greatly improve their net returns
from foraging by simultaneously exploiting foods from two trophic levels
while, at the same time, lowering dietary bulk.KM still does
not try to differentiate between inherent biochemistry and culture; and
this from an anthropologist turned meat-apologist.

KM: One critical aspect of this dietary
trajectory is that once animal matter entered the human diet as a dependable
staple, the overall nutrient content of plant foods could drop drastically,
if need be, so long as the digestible calories were present. As many plant
sources of nutrients far exceed flesh sources of the same nutrient
by factors of 10-100, as shown above, this is typically irrelevant and
misleading.

KM: Many underground storage
organs, for example, are a rich source of calories but are almost devoid
of nutrients; some contain cyanogenic glycosides. However, let's
see what the data really says: here, all roots having equal or greater
of any nutrient compared with beef will be marked with green, like:

100g sample

beef

potato
russett

carrot

yam

sweet
potato

garlic

wasabi
root

lotus
root

ginger
root

burdock
root

arrow
root

cassava
root

turnip
+ grns

rutabaga

beet

100g sample

energy, Kcal

322

25

43

118

105

149

109

74

69

72

65

160

21

36

43

energy, Kcal

pro, %

25.6

2.2

1

1.5

1.6

6.4

4.8

2.6

1.7

1.5

4.2

1.4

2.5

1.2

1.6

pro, %

fat, %

23.5

0.2

0.2

0.3

0.5

0.6

0.1

0.7

0.2

0.2

0.3

0.2

0.2

0.2

fat, %

cho

0

4.6

10.1

27.9

24.3

33.1

23.5

17.2

15.1

17.4

13.4

38

3.4

8.1

9.6

cho

fiber

0

2.3

3

4.1

3

2.1

7.7

4.9

2

3.3

1.3

1.8

2,4

2.5

2.8

fiber

Ca, mg

9

16

27

17

22

181

128

45

18

41

6

16

114

47

16

Ca, mg

P, mg

198

58

44

55

28

153

80

100

27

51

98

27

24

58

40

P, mg

Fe, mg

2.2

1.2

0.5

0.5

0.6

1.7

1

1.2

0.5

0.8

2.2

0.3

1.6

0.5

0.8

Fe, mg

Na, mg

62

7

35

9

13

17

17

40

13

5

26

14

18

20

78

Na, mg

K, mg

347

450

323

816

204

401

568

556

415

308

454

271

82

337

325

K, mg

Mg, mg

24

24

15

21

0.4

25

69

23

43

38

25

21

18

23

23

Mg, mg

Zn, mg

5.4

0.3

0.2

0.2

0.3

1.2

1.6

0.4

0.3

0.3

0.6

0.3

0.2

0.3

0.4

Zn, mg

Cu, mg

0.1

0.1

0.2

0.2

0.3

0.2

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.1

Cu, mg

Mn, mg

0

0.2

0.1

0.4

0.4

1.7

0.4

23

0.2

0.2

0.2

0.4

0.2

0.2

0.3

Mn, mg

Se, mcg

24.1

0.4

1.1

0.7

0.6

14.2

0.7

0.7

0.7

0.7

0.7

0.7

0.9

0.7

0.7

Se, mcg

Vit A, IU

28129

20063

46

19

25

6108

580

38

Vit A, IU

Vit E

0.2

0.5

0.2

0.3

0.3

0.4

0.2

0.3

0.3

Vit E

Thiamin, mg

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.2

0.1

0.2

0.1

0.1

0.1

Thiamin, mg

Riboflavin

0.2

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.2

0.1

0.1

Riboflavin

Niacin, mg

4.3

1.4

0.9

0.6

0.7

0.7

0.7

0.4

0.7

0.3

1.7

0.9

0.4

0.7

0.3

Niacin, mg

PantoAcid,mg

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.3

0.6

0.6

0.2

0.4

0.2

0.3

0.3

0.1

0.1

0.2

0.2

PantoAcid,mg

B-6, mg

0.4

0.2

0.1

0.3

0.3

1.2

0.3

0.3

0.2

0.2

0.3

0.1

0.1

0.1

0.1

B-6, mg

Folate, mcg

8.0

31

14

23

14

3.0

18

13

11

23

338

27

41

21

109

Folate, mcg

B-12, mcg

2.4

B-12, mcg

Vit C, mg

0

16.9

9.3

17.1

22.7

31.2

41.9

44

5

3

1.9

20.6

25.8

25

4.9

Vit C, mg

Cholesterol, mg

83

Cholesterol, mg

Thus, we see
that plant roots are generally significantly richer than beef in carbohydrates,
fiber, calcium, potassium, magnesium, Vit A, Vit E, thiamin, pantothenic
acid, folate, and Vit C. Clearly, they are most certainly not "almost
devoid of nutrients" as KM claims, without support!
Further, the protein content is much closer
to the human adult need of ~1/3%
of the overall diet, beef being pathologically excessive, and plant foods
generally do not "need" to be cooked, thus eliminating the highly
carcinogenic compounds, such as nitrosamines, that are formed by cooking
animal protein and fats. The fat content in plant foods is
highly limited, compared to the excessive fat in animal products, and
it is not artery-glogging, saturated animal fat, nor does it contain cholesterol
whatsoever. And, the iron is non-heme iron, not the carcinogenic
heme-iron contained in
animal products.
So, once again, objective data exposes the
meatarian propaganda to be absolutely false.

KM: Grains, too, are a rich source of calories
but most species lack some essential nutrients humans require and many
contain cyanogenic glycosides.Grains, being
grass seeds, certainly are not a natural item in the human diet; rather,
they have been selected out of the gene pool, by cultivation and selective
breeding, for increased seed size for thousands of years -- they are a
human-created artifact that must be eaten cooked. Worse, they contain
opioid residues that adversely affect one's consciousness
and exacerbate schizophrenia .
It would seem that an anthropologist should
be able to differentiate between Nature and Natural Law vs. self-destructive
cultural practices, but this important distinction is seldom seen in anthropological
"research" or the other "descriptive sciences". This
fundamental flaw, and others, in these reductionistic professions is responsible
for the pandemic institutionalized absurdity, muddled thinking, and misinformation
so prevalent in them.

KM: But with animal matter in the diet
to supply many essential nutrients, including sulfur-containing amino
acids, the low nutritional value of some plant foods should not pose a
barrier to human feeders as long as the digestible energy is there and
any harmful secondary compounds can be detoxified. Some
non-animal foods containing methionine, the only essential amino acid
that contains sulfur, are: sesame seeds, spirulina, wakami, kelp, soy,
tofu, sunflower seeds, watermelon seeds, poppy seeds, wild rice, brown
rice, peanuts, pistachio nuts, almonds, caraway seeds, garlic, oats, barley,
rice, lotus seeds, quinona, lentils, couscous, corn, popcorn, beans in
general, grains in general, nuts in general.
So, the implication, made repeatedly above,
that animal protein must be consumed to detox cyanogenic plants is seen
to be absolutely false.

KM: Another important aspect of meat-eating
concerns the increasing importance, as evolution progressed, of higher-quality,
volumetrically concentrated foods for infants and children. This is absolutely
nonsensical. The perfect food for all mammalian infants is its mother's
milk; it always was, it always will be. After weaning, the adult
diet is then consumed.
This abundantly obvious fact has nothing
to do with "evolution"; however, just throwing that vague, yet
always scientific-sounding word around here and there gives this silly
exposition a guise of credibility.
You will never see in any book on "evolution"
any tales of "increasing importance" of "higher-quality,
volumetrically concentrated foods for infants and children" as "evolution"
progressed; and you will never see any claim that "evolution",
itself, "progressed", for that would imply a direction, goal,
or teleology.

KM: As the World Health Organization states:
''A newborn infant needs dietary protein that contains 37% of its weight
in the form of essential amino acids, whereas for adults the figure is
less than half - about 15%. This has led many to suspect that protein
quality is of limited relevance to adults.... Protein quality is of great
importance in rapidly growing young animals which are actively depositing
new body protein.''That's nice,
but the proper food for the newborn infant is its mother's milk, NOT a
dead corpse, and NOT the milk of a foreign species.

KM: I depart from those who suggest that
meat may have been only a marginal food for early humans. I have come
to believe that the incorporation of animal matter into the diet played
an absolutely essential role in human evolution.Here's that word,
again.
"Evolution" is generally claimed
to be a process of random mutations, or random rearrangements, of sexual
genetic information that provides variety in any species by sexual reproduction.
Another poorly defined process, with apparently no known examples,
is "natural selection". That is the interaction of environmental
variables with a given species of animal such that the more "fit"
out-reproduce those less "fit", such that the more "fit"
come to dominate the population over time. KM seems to be
invoking the archaic, long-discredited, Lamarckian Evolutionary model,
some 200 years out-of-date, that held that an organism's behavior influenced
the evolution of the species by modifying the genetic material of
that individual -- of course, in Larmarck's time (1744-1829) there was
no understanding of genetic inheritance, so this error was forgivable
for Larmarck. However, to make the same claim today is unconscionable.
Quoted elsewhere:
KM: " the behaviors and physiology that define us are the consequences
of dietary-driven evolution. . . and everything comes back to diet." Note
the cart-before-the-horse 'logic'; she claims that chosen diet is the
driving force behind physiological evolution; however, the animal's pre-existing
physiology and biochemistry determine what diet the animal should eat.
E.g. even though humans have been eating animal flesh for millions
of years, humans have evolved neither the physical tools (sharp, pointy
things; increased running speed), digestive biochemistry, or, particularly
noteworthy, the instincts to do so, as a result of that long-standing,
cultural dietary choice; thus, there is no "dietary-driven evolution".
We do not see an evolutionary pattern of
any species radically altering its diet from frugivore to omnivore, because
that would require a profound change in digestive, absorptive, transportive,
and assimilative biochemistry that fundamentally affects dozens, or possibly
hundreds, of individual biochemical pathways -- these dramatic changes
happening simultaneously, and in concert, due to random events.
It is clear that the human did not 'adapt'
to a flesh-oriented diet in any evolutionary sense; one need only to look
at the epidemiological evidence linking the human consumption of animal
products with all the currently-popular "degenerative diseases".
Also, the fact that people uniformly experience increased health
after abandoning animal products, and a similar effect when reducing or
eliminating cooking, indicates that no 'adaptation' to an animal-based
diet, or cooking, ever occurred.
One would hope that an anthropologist would have some
understanding of "evolution" and genetics, but apparently that
is not required, even at the PhD level. That is disgraceful, but
an insight into the lack of integrity of the current "educational
system", which teaches people what to think, but certainly
not how to think.

KM: Current evidence offers strong support
for the critical role of micronutrients in the proper development and
growth of human infants. The high nutritional value of animal matter,
not only as a source of essential amino acids, but also as a concentrated
supply of micronutrients, seems particularly critical. Notice that no
real data is ever given to support these overly broad claims; what micronutrients
- we never know. Plant material is also a source of essential amino
acids; that's where the herbivore got them. The above data
indicates that the "concentrated supply of micronutrients" is
a myth.

KM: Because of the increase in the ratio
of metabolic requirements to gut capacity in homeotherms, [warm-blooded
animals] eating a diet high in bulky plant material could pose
virtually insurmountable problems for small children, with their high
energetic and nutrient demands, as well as large brain relative to body
size.This homeotherm
issue, that of requiring dietary input to maintain a constant body temperature,
is not a real problem for a tropical human species living in tropical
temperatures. Further, there are many species of herbivores that
live quite comfortably in cold climates: moose, caribou, and deer, for
example. Yet, all the 'children' of all the millions of plant-eating
species on the planet do not suffer these mythical, always-unspecified
"insurmountable problems"; could it possibly be that Nature
knows what it is doing, and the pseudoscientists have not caught on yet?
Who should we believe? Nature, with
its countless hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary success, or
some confused, culturally-conditioned, closed-minded, meat-propagandizing,
"scientists" who continue to drop like flies with cancer, heart
attacks, and strokes, while promulgating dietary nonsense like this?

KM: Raw meat, organs, brains, viscera,
and bones are concentrated sources of iron, calcium, iodine, sodium, and
zinc, vitamin A, many B vitamins, vitamin C and other essential micronutrients,
not to mention high-quality protein and fat. Is KM really
advising humans to eat "raw meat, organs, brains, viscera, and
bones"?? Does she eat them? NO! Does
she kill her animal prey with her bare hands and eat it whole and raw,
like all natural carnivores and omnivores do? I challenge her to
kill a kitten with her bare hands and eat it raw and whole, including
of course the "organs, brains, viscera, and bones" per her own
recommendation. Perhaps, failing that simple test, she will revise
her insupportable dietary dogma?
The nutritional comparisons made above
refute these excessive, inaccurate claims; specifically, common plant
foods contain more, and quite frequently many times more, Ca, P, Fe (non-carcinogenic),
K, Mg, Cu, Mn, Vit A, Vit E, Thiamin, Riboflavin, B-6, Folate, and Vit
C than common beef.
The 'meat equals "high-quality"
protein' shibboleth is an archaic, totally unsupported, meatarian myth.
The proteins in the herbivore's flesh came from the plants the herbivore
ate; there is no proof that all essential amino acids must be eaten in
every meal, as the fallacious "high-quality" meat protein mythology
suggests. You will notice that all these claims as to "quality"
never are supported with any credible data or logical rational.
Further, this "high-quality" atherogenic
animal fat and inherent cholesterol are known to devastate human health.
KM totally ignores the epidemiological evidence linking animal products
with all the currently-popular "degenerative diseases".
Overweight, obesity, and morbid obesity
are dangerous pandemic conditions among cultural diet-eaters, and meat-eaters
are the the most obese. Vegetarians/vegans
are rarely overweight, and raw
vegetarians/vegans are as slim as natural animals on a natural diet.
KM, on the other hand, seems overweight
in this out-of-date photo,
and since cultural diet eaters tend to pack on weight as they age, she
is probably more obese today.

KM: A recent study of factors associated
with inadequate childhood growth, size, and health in several third-world
nations identified inadequate amounts of particular micronutrients including
iron, zinc, calcium, and vitamin B12, rather than an inadequate supply
of protein or particular amino acids, as the likely culprits. Lack of trace
elements is a consequence of growing crops on mineral-depleted soil, not
a function of meat vs. no meat in the human diet. If food animals
are raised on mineral-deficient plants, they too will be mineral-deficient.
But, notice the contradiction: in the previous sentence, meat was
"high-quality" protein, inferring that plant protein is somehow
"low-quality", yet in the very next sentence, the problem is
not "an inadequate supply of protein or particular amino acids".
These amusing, repetitive, self-contradictions reduce the credibility
of the entire article to zero.

KM: Due to their content of available minerals
and vitamins, animal foods were recommended to help improve the nutritional
status of such children. Yet, the nutritional
data, above, show this alleged mineral and vitamin superiority
to be false.

KM: If the evolutionary trajectory I have
hypothesized was characteristic of human ancestors, the routine inclusion
of animal foods in the diets of weaned children seems mandatory. Plant
foods selected largely for energy content would not be capable of supplying
the essential micronutrients or protein children require for optimal mental
development and growth. Apparently not
knowing that 'evolutionary trajectories' are not determined by the individual's
diet, this claim is false. Show me any evidence in an evolutionary
text that cultural diets influenced the 'evolutionary trajectory' of the
tribe that consumed them.
The same unsupported and false claims are
repeated endlessly: nutritional data disproves these claims. Additionally,
the 'children' of all the other apes get exactly what they need from plants;
why are humans any different? No evidence is given to support this
claim, because there is none.
KM is oblivious to the fact that adult humans
need ~1/3% protein in their overall diets; pre-weaned
children may need ~1%, as that is the quantity in human milk, but certainly
not the 36 times that found in some meats. Where did the 3600% excess
digestive, absorptive, transportive, and assimilative capacity come from??
It does not exist!

KM: Many anthropoids appear to regard invertebrates
as highly desirable foods and will heavily exploit them when possible.Again, the data
says exactly the opposite. Goodall
found that chimps invested only ~4.1% of their feeding time on insects,
and this was restricted to essentially one species (termites), and that
this feeding was highly seasonal and generally limited to one month per
year when the hives split, and the inefficiency of insect mass eaten compared
to time expended was so low as to highly exaggerate the nutritional significance
implied by the time figures. So, again, KM takes a relatively insignificant
fact, and strips it of any concrete numerical validity in order to highly
exaggerate its negligible significance by using nonscientific terms like
"highly desirable" and "heavily exploit". This
article is more an exercise in creative writing than a scientific analysis.

KM: For example, Hamilton and coworkers
discussed two instances in which chacma baboons largely abandoned the
plant component of their diet for days to feed on insect outbreaks. Ayres
reported that red howler monkeys in Brazil focused on eating caterpillars
when a huge number of them occurred in their forested environment (personal
communication). These and other accounts suggest that many anthropoid
species like invertebrates and will eat more of them when they can. Ignoring that
we are apes, not baboons or red howlers, this is a clear indication that
such activity is highly opportunistic, in that it occurs only when
there is a highly-seasonal outbreak or highly-limited swarming event;
thus, such feeding is not a result of any continuing nutritional need
which is the concept implied. The important nutritional question
is what does the species eat on a daily basis, as those items represent
the true nutritional needs. There is no valid reason to exaggerate
the significance of relatively rare and nutritionally-insignificant events
or behaviors, except of course to generate meatarian propaganda.

KM: As noted, some chimpanzees commit a
fair degree of daily foraging time to termite fishing and ant dipping.
Goodall
points out that such activity is highly inefficient, in that "A
passage yielding only a few termites may, nevertheless, be worked for
minutes on end, particularly by females during the dry season." "... it
is not uncommon for a female at this time of year [dry season ljf] to
continue fishing for an hour or more even when she is getting only a few
termites every ten minutes." Similarly, for ant eating, "...
the mean intake for an adult during a dipping session in about 20 grams".
Since one could easily gather and eat 20
grams of fruit, leaves, or nuts in only a very few seconds, as opposed
to several minutes needed to collect 20 grams of ants, the implied nutritional
significance of insects implied by the time invested in these behaviors
is highly exaggerated.
Note that KM assiduously avoids revealing
anyquantities of anything, relying instead on intentionally-misleading
terms to "support" her specious arguments. It is not "daily
foraging time", obviously implying that it is a dailyactivity,
as significant insects are eaten in only a few, isolated months
of the year. Thus, this activity is neither "daily", as
falsely claimed, nor does it have any enduring nutritional significance,
so it may be more of a 'play' activity.

KM: Such foods may, however, provide apes with
particular essential nutrients that are inadequately supplied by their
particular plant-based diets. A real scientist
would identify all the "particular essential nutrients in
question", and compare their availability in various plant and prey-animal
species. The word "may" has absolutely no scientific significance,
one could just as well substitute "may not" for every time KM
invokes the totally meaningless "may". If one were to
remove all the "may", "probably", "might",
"most", "some", "seems", and other meaningless,
intentionally vague, "wiggle words" from this article, it would
simply evaporate into nothingness. Real science is based on observable
facts, not a tottering house of cards built on prejudicial wishful thinking
and specious speculation.

KM: Their summary indicates that meat-eating
is not a common feature of Old World anthropoid dietary behavior. Then why should
it be universal among humans, especially among young humans, as KM wants?

KM: One exception is the hunting behavior
of some common chimpanzees. Stanford reports that during peak periods
of meat eating by chimpanzees at Gombe, some adult male hunters may ingest
as much as 500 g of meat per week - a substantial amount. To date, factors
contributing to the hunting behavior of chimpanzees are not well understood,
but it has been suggested that social factors may be more important than
nutritional ones. One key point is that chimpanzees at Gombe rarely appear
to set out with the intention of hunting, but typically attacked prey
when they fortuitously encounter it during routine foraging excursions.
It is clear that
flesh-eating among
chimps is a social pathology, just as it is in the human. IF it
were a nutritional imperative, then all adults would eat it regularly;
they do not. Here, the non-nutritional and social aspects are finally
revealed, but this does not sway KM from her deep-rooted cultural fantasy
that humans must eat meat, especially children.

KM: Given the postulated body and brain
size of the earliest humans and the anatomy and kinetic characteristics
of the extant hominoid gut, the most expedient dietary avenue open to
proto-humans seems to have been to turn increasingly to the intentional
consumption of animal matter on a routine rather than a fortuitous basis.
As stated earlier,
gut kinetics (a term relating to the purely mechanical passage
of food through the gut) is absolutely independent of, and totally unrelated
to, digestive biochemistry. That is, items may pass through the
pipes without supplying any nutritional benefit whatsoever, so implying
nutritional benefit simply because some non-nutritional item may be eaten
and passed is nonsensical. KM's willful ignoring of the relevant
biochemistry, and her trying to reduce complex nutritional issues to simplistic
mechanical pumping, underscores her profound ignorance of the real issues
involved.

KM: Early humans might have been able to
transform a lower-quality plant food into a higher-quality one through
technological innovations such as grinding or cooking. Yet, cooking
is well known to damage essential nutrients, denature
proteins, and produce toxic pyrolytic (fire splitting) chemicals and Maillard-reaction
products, in addition to potent carcinogens, especially with the cooking
of meats. Further, those who experiment with raw diets quickly find
that they need to eat far less that they did when consuming cooked food.
It should be obvious that humans co-evolved with their natural diet,
and no technological tinkering by a science only a few decades, or millennia,
old will enhance the nutritional quality of natural plants.

KM: ... it seems most expedient to view
the earliest humans (Homo) as initially having turned to animal prey to
supply the amino acids and many micronutrients they required, using plant
foods primarily as an energy source. Yet, there is no evidence
that plant amino acids are inferior or lack any micronutrients, in many
fact plants contain significantly higher concentrations of many nutrients,
as shown in the tables, above. Yet another self-contradiction
on the amino acid issue.

KM: Future paleontological and archaeological
research, together with closer examination of features of comparative
gut anatomy and digestive physiology of Hominoidea and other anthropoids
should help to clarify the costs and benefits that were involved in the
adaptation of this dietary strategy in the human lineage and to determine
how this strategy may initially have been implemented. If the evolutionary
trajectory I have hypothesized was characteristic of human ancestors,
the routine inclusion of animal foods in the diets of weaned children
seems mandatory. Here's some real
research projects to examine this issue. Let KM kill her chosen
prey animals with her natural equipment and eat them whole and raw as
her hypothetical story indicates. A little personal experience
will quickly convince her of the absurdity of her claims. Let KM
examine a raw diet by personal experience.The "costs"
of consuming animal products is clearly reflected in the "health
care" costs associated with the consumption of same; the epidemiology
is clear on this, but apparently ignored here for convenience.
KM's main, and frequently repeated, errors
are:
1> confusing trivial physical
parameters, such as gut morphology and mechanical gut kinetics (pumping
action) with highly complex, interdependent processes of digestive, absorptive,
transportive, and assimilative biochemistry. The primitive tools
of physical anthropology, such as the ruler and stopwatch, simply do not
apply to chemistry, biochemistry, or nutrition,
2> confusing Nature and culture:
"Early physical anthropology is often marked by the tendency to conflate
cultural and biological characteristics, science was often crowded out
by ethnocentricity". [1,
2] Apparently,
this early error has not been corrected.
3> believing that individual's
behavior (culture) influences the evolution of the species,
4> substituting intentional
vagaries (may, probably, might, most, some, seems) for credible numerical
data, especially when credible data leads to the opposite conclusion,
5> frequently using unscientific,
undefined, pejorative terms: "high-quality", "low-quality",
in order to create an irrational conceptual bias,
6> making unsupported, erroneous
nutritional claims that are refuted by standard nutritional data,
7> self-contradiction,
8> ignoring the large body
of epidemiological evidence that links all currently-popular "degenerative
diseases" to the consumption of meat and other animal products,
9> comparing humans with
non-ape species.

What
has caused this profoundly muddled thinking?
The educational specialty of physical anthropology
apparently is willfully ignorant of biochemistry and more focused on simplistic
physical measurements, such as the length of one's gut, not the much more
complex processes of biochemistry that necessarily occur within it. As
a result, any claims about diet based on physical anthropology are meaningless,
as we have repeatedly seen. This confused thinking is unavoidable
when educational institutions give away PhD's in esoteric and narrowly
convergent specialties without requiring a basic grounding in the real
sciences. Thus, the institutionalized failures of education is responsible
for KM's wild and insupportable claims regarding human nutrition. This
is a perfect example of the intellectual corruption that inevitably is
created by limiting oneself to a narrow, self-referent specialty; especially,
in one of the "descriptive sciences" where a broad knowledge
of real sciences is not required.
Curiously, she also supports the human consumption
of insects.
KM has two degrees in English Literature,
and originally planned to be a literary critic; she claims her head is
still "filled with poetry" today. Perhaps this is why
her "scientific" writing is so poetically imaginative and creative,
without the practical and quite necessary restraints of logic and factual
data? She believes "poetry elevates"; however, real science
should not elevate one's imagination, but inform one with facts and educate
one with logic.
Further, she is burdened with an all-too-common
and offensive academic arrogance as clearly revealed in the following
from an e-mail 'response' to John Coleman, a raw-food researcher who took
the time to e-mail her with some comments on her article. John has
been an experiential raw-food researcher
for ~ 7 years, so is personally familiar with raw chimp-like diets in
his own body, unlike the overweight KM who clearly knows nothing about
human plant-based diets, raw diets, or healthy human diets, as her meatarian
propagandist article reveals.

Look--if you're so smart you teach here and
I'll retire and eat
fruit. I don't have time to debate with every individual eating some
odd diet who reads my work and wants to take up my time with his/her
opinions. My work is all peer reviewed and if you don't like it,
then please ignore it! KM
Katharine Milton
Dept. ESPM, Div. I.B.
201 Wellman Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3112 "

So, she thinks
John's ongoing efforts in personally experiencing a totally raw, frugivorous-ape
diet, such as our species evolved on, is "odd", while her
mindlessly following of the local pathogenic, cultural, cooked-meat diet
is superior? Apparently, she does not understand cultural anthropology
sufficiently to realize that her narrow-minded acceptance of a totally-unnatural
meat-based diet was simply programmed into her at a very early age, without
her understanding, conscious analysis or decision, by similarly-programmed
and similarly-ignorant parents.
Further, 'peer review' means following the
popular dogma of the day to the satisfaction of the particular, narrow
academic specialty, it is an effective way of maintaining the conceptual
status quo, it is the mechanism by which the fundamental errors we see
in all disciplines are institutionalized and propagated. Clearly,
anthropological 'peers' would benefit by studying some biochemistry, such
as to avoid the frequent chemical errors evident in KM's article.

So, KM gets
an "A" in the creative writing of fiction and academic arrogance,
but an "F" in science, open-mindedness, communication, and human
relations.